


A Tuesday in March

by Markala



Series: The Unnamed Werewolf!Lily Evans AU - Series Title Pending [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, Animagus, Blood, Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Do Not Do What Sirius Black Did, For Want of a Nail, Hogwarts Fifth Year, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm putting Lily Evans through the wringer sorry not sorry, James your bi is showing, Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape Friendship, Lily has claustrophobia, Magic, Marauders, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Mild Gore, Other, POV James Potter, POV Lily Evans Potter, POV Severus Snape, Sirius Black's Prank on Severus Snape, Unreliable Narrator, Werewolf Lily Evans, Werewolf!Lily AU, Worldbuilding, all aboard the butterfly express, aren't we all unreliable narrator's in the end, flapflap, it's a WIP which might be better or worse idk, not a oneshot anymore, still an entitled arsehole unfortunately, that moment when you go outside to walk off your claustrophobia and get bitten by a werewolf, too lazy to fix the tag order sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24126790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Markala/pseuds/Markala
Summary: Just another 16th of March in the year 1976 at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry; the weather has been mild if still rather nippy, it's Tuesday.“Sirius Black showed he was capable of murder at the age of sixteen,” he breathed. “You haven’t forgotten that, Headmaster? You haven’t forgotten that he once tried to kill me?”“My memory is as good as it ever was, Severus,” said Dumbledore quietly.-Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 21: Hermione's Secret(The one where a sixteen-year-old Severus Snape traipses into the hidden passage 'neath the Whomping Willow, and in this world, where one Lily J. Evans follows in behind him.)
Relationships: James Potter & Severus Snape, Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape
Series: The Unnamed Werewolf!Lily Evans AU - Series Title Pending [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1770388
Comments: 16
Kudos: 55





	1. March 15, 1976

**Author's Note:**

> Well this... Happened. Hope ya'lls enjoy, I had a ball writing this. Poor Lily.
> 
> EDIT: Title has been changed because the Lunar calendar is different on the other side of the world, who knew.

Sometimes Lily Evans stares up at the ceiling of her dorm not feeling like much of a Gryffindor.

She never tells anyone of these feelings of course, not even her friends; the teen gets up to pace the room, abandoning the open potions’ text and a half-written essay on her bed.

Why just this past afternoon she’d cancelled another after-hours’ meeting with Severus, citing some House busyness she couldn’t afford to miss, because what is she supposed to say really? _‘Hey, your arsehole friends probably want me dead or worse, can you not kiss up to them by parroting them pretty please? Oh by the by, I can’t tell if you’re actually being serious when you actually do parrot their bullshit a little? It scares me, would you stop?’_

Lily should probably say that, she really should, but she doesn’t and she hasn’t; and Severus either hasn’t noticed or has and doesn’t care, and Lily wants to avoid thinking too hard about which of those options hurt the most.

…

All of a sudden, her room and its cheerfully-decorated walls feel all too small.

Mary, Marlene and Marian weren’t in for the night yet; and it's somewhat fortuitous that Lily hadn’t even gotten ready for bed either, still clad in her day clothes as she gets back into her shoes and pockets her wand before slipping out for a walk that's she knows will surely to break curfew; afterwards passing through a largely empty Gryffindor Common Room and then into an equally-deserted hallway.

_'I'm a Prefect, I have an excuse, everyone hates late patrol.'_

A few lost points is always better than stewing in her thoughts all night, sleepless and unable to move without rudely waking her housemates. The Gryffindor girl resists the urge to physically cringe at the thought of having to explain herself, with not-quite-lies of course, to her dormmates of that hypothetical future, while resisting the urge to word-vomit her feelings all over them.

So she walks and walks and walks, passing hall after hall after hall with their magical sconces lighting the way, and Lily is going to fucking scream if she doesn’t find a window soon.

The redhead walks with a purpose, chest ever-tightening and shoulders heavy as hands press hard into her robe pockets, before finally turning a corner into a long hallway made up of a wall of unused classrooms– _Hogwarts has a lot of those_ –and another that was nothing but massive bay windows, just as a familiar head of dark hair and secondhand robes turn the farthest corner.

Severus.

A strange mixture of relief, apprehension and guilt bubbles in Lily’s throat before she notices a strange glinting on the floor near an alcove opposite to the windows; she approaches it quickly before realizing what it is.

It was a knife.

Neatly folded into its shiny but nicked handle, glinting softly in the light of a quickly-setting sun, it wasn’t a secondhand knife for potions’ ingredient prep, no, but a switchblade the girl remembers well and fondly; stolen from an older boy back in Cokeworth. The day had been cloudy, Lily had eaten a sausage for breakfast, Sev had been wearing a grey shirt; not the one with bloodstains on the front but the one with inky oil stains on the sleeves.

_‘He must’ve dropped it.’_

Images of her friend’s bruised face, her scuffed shoes and conspiratory grins flit through her thoughts, the nostalgic ring of victorious laughter while huddled in an old library avoiding reprisal from the former owners’ lackies. The knife had been like a trophy, and Severus had kept it with him from then on.

_“It’s something we won together, o’ course ‘m gonna keep it.”_

Lily’s mouth twists pensively, and her heart races, and thinks that she could still catch up with Severus if she ran. They still haven’t talked about it, and she’d be a liar if she said she hadn’t missed him and doing things together, but his friends were swotty, arsehole, Death Eater-wannabes to be polite.

That wasn’t polite, but Lily doesn’t care.

But best friends are supposed to talk to each other, tell and keep each other’s secrets, not avoid each other and hope the problem goes away. The knife disappears into her skirt pocket, and Lily jogs to catch up.

This was going to be the end of their friendship, huh? Years and years of little magicks and whispered secrets; surprise family dinner buffers and covering each other’s’ arses; magic projects over the weekends and afterhours; it was all going to end tonight, wasn’t it? Not with a bang, but a whimper?

…

Lily can’t believe she’d already forgotten how unfairly quick Severus’ lanky beanpole legs made him. She always would just barely manage to catch sight of him too far ahead, and the growing lump in her throat always stole her words away before she could call out. And soon she’s outside, having followed her friend down some stairs and only caught up enough to see him disappear into the root-snarled base of the Whomping Willow.

This couldn’t be end of them. It can’t. It shouldn’t be.

Lily stops, apprehensive to approach the temperamental tree and then there’s a bit of shame, is it always going to be like this? Always stopping and never as brave as she’d like? The grass swishes quietly beneath her sneakers, switchblade burning a hole in her pocket, as a girl of sixteen approaches the open entrance her still-friend had disappeared into as the magic willow’s branches sway almost-serenely in the air around her.

The teen remembers hopped tracks and gates, running afoul of miscreants and grownups both, and shared meals and library books. Sev taught her how to throw a punch, she taught him how to play cards like Daddy taught her, even if her friend wasn’t all that good. Lily and Sev have _history_ , that has to mean something in the end, doesn’t it?

The tunnel entrance is small and its darkness thick and earthy, and Lily hates it immediately even as her lit wand only wards off a tiny portion of said darkness. The girl plods forward, ignoring the slight constriction of her chest and feeling braver than she’d been a few minutes ago.

So Lily plunges into the dark, barely noticing the last of the sunlight completely disappear from behind the foreboding line of the Forbidden Forest; she has a knife to return.

* * *

Severus is going to die.

Oh, and Remus _bloody_ Lupin was a _fucking_ _werewolf_ , but that’s beside the point. Severus’d taken Black’s bait like the bloody moron that brutish buffoon thought he was, hook, line, and sinker; and here he is, staring into the jaws of death of a pissed werewolf.

The boy turns, the teen-turned-beast growls with a jerky forward lunge, and Severus trips backwards flat onto his arse, and then in a single bound the Slytherin student was between the front paws of a monster and somewhere in the milliseconds between those two things his wand had slipped from his fingers.

“FUCK!”

Snarling, open jaws, full of sharp teeth and angry spittle-

“Bombarda!”

BANG-BANG-POP!

A ringing explosion and the beast’s jaws snap shut a split second before crashing into the floor next to Severus’ head, howling with pain. Severus’ ears are ringing and his body feels sluggish and shaky, but he manages to roll to look at the source voice coming from the tunnel exit.

Lily.

“Come on, ugly!” Severus feels the foreign sense of relief turn to horror as his timely savior screams with almost suicidal confidence at his attacker and darts over from the side of the tunnel exit, daring the beast to come after her instead her stupid, stupid friend, “over here! Stupefy!”

_FLASH!_

Red light of a stunning spell splatters uselessly against the wire-haired hide, as the monster’s howl of pain quickly morphed into a snarl of rage as it abandons the prone Severus to give chase.

Another spell scatters, before Lily tries to dodge far too late, back falling against the reinforced shack wall with nowhere to go.

Then Lily’s snapped up, massive jaws closing over the entire juncture of her shoulder and her neck with a rustling snap. The Shrieking Shack’s dimly lit, but Severus smells the iron before he hears her scream as the creature lifts his friend off her feet, with a sharp jerk to one side, not unlike how dogs would start to shake small animals they catch.

She’s going to die-!

Severus can’t breath and Lily was going to die as his hands scramble for his fucking wand, but then her free arm slaps upward, toward the werewolf’s face.

A pained shriek, Lily’s falling to the ground as Severus raises his wand-

“Incarcerous!”

Conjured ropes appear to bind legs and body as it writhes, bays and snarls as Severus rushes past, struggling to haul his friend up to her feet before shakily half-dragging her past the wild-eyed creature of death and teeth snapping at his conjured ropes; the seconds it takes to get back to the tunnel that would lead out back to the Whomping Willow feel like an eternity.

Not three steps down the tunnel before Lily’s weight is violently ripped away from Severus, she screams as the werewolf does shake her like a ragdoll this time, and then suddenly she’s airborne and bouncing off a wall and onto the floor with an echoing thud.

On the opposite side of the shack, away from Severus and the Whomping Willow exit.

_Dammit._

Sick amber orbs regard him aggressively, he could either run or go for Lily again but-

“BUARRR!”

A fucking deer bursts through the door, moonlight bright and illuminating the shack behind it, full body tackling the werewolf with a fierce, mooing bellow. The werewolf barks and snorts, snapping at the deft animal, distracted once again.

The stag fends the monster off, bone-like rack of pointed tines drawing occasional blood and more ear-rattling bellows-

But Severus doesn’t bother wasting time wondering what they hell was going, he grabs his friend and hauls her onto his back entirely, and is halfway up the tunnel before even realizing that he was crying.

He nearly trips again, and dearly hates his awful ill-fitting shoes as Lily groans out wet sort of hiccough.

“Lily!” He half-whispers, half-sobs, they’re at the exit now, his shoulder and back are wet but he can see the moonlight outside, “stay awake, okay?! Just, stay awake, please.”

“S’ a first,” a gurgling sort of laugh and her words slurring together, “hahh, y’ har’ly ev’ say puh-leassssee Sefff…”

What the fuck are you doing here? The boy forgets to scream as he makes the mistake of looking over at the redhead he’s half-carrying on his shoulder, catching sight of the ragged tears in her flesh, her throat is distressingly open and awfully bright even in the poor lighting.

They’re outside now and then it’s a mad dash to the Hospital Wing, Severus is muttering furiously, but about he can’t actually say for sure. Every step feels like a bloody mile, and the ugly mantra of, _‘I should’ve just gone to bed, I should’ve just gone bed,’_ repeats itself stupid in his head right next to, _‘they tried to kill us, they tried to kill us.’_

Passing another shut, unused classroom, “Lily, talk to me! Pleasepleasepl-!”

It’s dumb, the sixteen-year-old boy thinks, that he needs to hear his friend let him know she’s still alive while she was fucking dying, after being mangled by a werewolf-!

Shite.

“’L’ft ‘r kn’ffffe,” are the next words, his friend’s good arm patting strangely at his chest, Severus is only two hallways away now, he thinks as she adds, “’s’rry.”

“What!?” Severus can’t help but sob stupidly, hating every dumb and hiccupping breath of his own that escapes him. There’s an awful warm feeling over his nape as Lily’s head and neck lolls uselessly at the juncture of one of his shoulders.

Lily doesn’t respond again.

The last long hallway is a blur, and Severus fights the mounting hysterical thought that he’s carting a corpse instead of his dying friend until the entrance of the Hospital Wing finally greets him. Then his next memory is the image of an awake Madame Pomfrey, now a blur of activity as the mediwitch finally levitates his _best friend_ off his back and onto a bed as Severus blurts out something along the lines of:

“Lily! Werewolf mauled her-! Lupin-! Shit!” All the while, Severus gasps for breath after his mad sprint.

Lily lets out a whimper and Severus is so awash with relief that he steps back, and-

!!

The lanky boy catches himself on the edge of a cot as he looks down, staring down at the bright and viscous puddle he’d slipped on and then feels terribly ill. But he manages to spit out some offer of assistance to Madame Pomfrey the boy barely remembers hearing himself speak.

“Get dittany and Blood Replenishing potions from the cabinet, now!” Ruined bits of his friends uniform is vanished away, and Severus averts his gaze.

A jerky nod, and he runs over to the large cabinet, barely remembers to clean the blood off his hands before handling the potions, and returns with the aforementioned items to hand them over to the mediwitch with a numb sort of finishing grace.

The boy makes the mistake of looking over his friend, her wounds looking even worse in the brightness of the Hospital Wing.

His vision blurs.

 _‘Stop fuckin’ scrikin’ already,’_ the lanky boy mentally harangues himself, _‘Lily’s dying, and you’re dead useless to 'er like this!’_

“Out of the way!” Madame Pomfrey shoos him away commandingly, before focusing back on her patient, wand flying through motions unfamiliar to Severus.

Severus complies with her orders, and some, seconds? Minutes? He can’t tell anymore really, Severus’ focus comes back as he’s sitting on an empty cot with his bloodied uniform staining the sheets, he’d been looking down at his hands, one with its white-knuckled grip on his wand, the other open and clammy with bright, little red flakes peeling off at the wrist.

The urge to vomit’s there, but nothing comes of it as Severus starts to tremble.

...

Tears fall, unheard.

* * *

Prance back, sidestep, charge forward-

“AIEEP!”

-Ignore guilt over Moony’s pained yip– _which is a lot easier as Prongs_ –and repeat. Moony would thank James for it later, maybe.

Toss antlers to parry, regain footing and leap right to avoid his friend’s wild haymaker of a clawswipe, back up towards the open door of the shack-

_Scff-scff-scff!_

At the sound of a single pair of retreating footsteps, Moony’s head turns away-

_‘Nononononononofuck-!’_

“BUARR!” Prongs bellows a challenge, charging and manages against all odds to body check Moony into a wall before retreating. Before James even realizes, he’s outside and on his lips were the last syllables of a spell he doesn’t remember starting to cast.

“-oportus!”

BANGBANGBANGBANG-!

“ROOOO!”

The sounds of Moony hurling his massive lupine body at the shack’s door and wall rattle and enraged yowls pierce the night, and though according to Moony it was spelled unbreakable and warded by Headmaster Albus Dumbledore himself-

BANGTHUMP!

James jolts backwards anyways, breathing hard and sweating, mahogany wand clutched tight. Despite the thumping beat of mortal peril and mounting sense of cold unease, he laments that Moony would be friendless tonight, and will wake up tomorrow to the news James knew his friend feared most.

The teen frowns.

More bangs, more thumps, more inhuman growls and a heartbreakingly growing amount of pitiable whines, but the structure of the Shrieking Shack holds. A sigh of relief escapes James, he was alone out here, and while he loves his friend, he knows from many a close call earlier this year that everything could turn from bad to worse in a heartbeat.

James had left Sirius and Peter behind almost immediately upon Sirius’ bragadocious claim less than a half hour from moonrise, that he’d offhandedly told Snivellus about ‘something’ going down at Shrieking Shack every full moon. James remembers sprinting off into the woods, forgetting the Whomping Willow tunnel entirely, and vowing to hex Sirius’ stupid arse when he got back for doing something so utterly stupid.

No time for this, need to go, now.

Feet and hands to cloven hooves, hair and skin to supple pelt, cervine grace replaces teenage awkwardness once again and Prongs is away.

Hooves almost glide over the grass, through the fields and trees, Prongs has to take the long way back since the tunnel’s unavailable.

Then the sixteen-year-old boy-turned-stag remembers the high screams and the prone form of one Lily Evans, he’d barely caught a glimpse of her before having to focus on tangling with Moony. She’d been in a bad way, her leg, bloody mangled with a grim peeking of bone showing up in the dim light, and her equally stained uniform all torn.

Evans just laid there, utterly still and with Moony still snarling.

What happened back there? Prongs recollects that Snape had been on the other side, nearest to the tunnel entrance, with Moony between the Slytherin and Evans. James hadn’t seen them leave, but he thinks Snape took her with him before fleeing.

 _'He'd better have,'_ James thought trails off darkly as he races forward.

Merlin’s balls, everything is _fucked_ tonight.

The moon is higher in the night sky as grass and dirt beneath Prongs’ hooves turn to stonework, he doesn’t shift back, opting to gallop madly through the halls to where he knew the Hospital Wing is located.

_‘Pleasebealrightpleasebealrightpleasebe-!’_

He finds himself praying a little, in a strangely distant way, to the vague and formless magical deities he remembers his father mentioning his great-grandparents following, though the teenager couldn’t quite place who or what those deities did apart from their roots in magical myth.

Hooves skid as he veers around another deserted corner.

_‘Please don’t let me have to tell Moony’s he’s killed someone-!’_

James is finally here, there’s a resistance as the young stag _barrels_ through the Hospital Wing doorway, barely able to come back to himself and shift back into human form before Madame Pomfrey turns to barely acknowledge the sudden ruckus before turning back to her patient.

Then James spies Evans on the infirmary bed, still in a bad way, but not _awful_. And twinning thoughts rear their heads, one, Evans is going to live.

“Thank Merli-”

_CRACK!_

James’ nose crunches sickeningly and he registers an inhuman sound of inordinate rage as he’s tackled bodily to the floor, and knuckles rain down on his face before he even registers that his attacker is even a person.

James, briefly, sees stars.

It’s Snape, James realizes by the third punch at one and a half seconds of the beatdown in while trying to raise his arms or wand, only to realize that Snape’s sitting on both of them, pinning the otherwise stronger boy to the ground as the lanky kid’s punches keep on landing.

James has never seen the kind of hate that Snape’s face bore this close before. Eyes bloodshot, teeth bared, nape and shoulders soaked in the blood of someone far prettier than him and then there’s the air that’s practically crackling around them. Snape is screaming something now, snarling words down at his victim, but James can’t make them out as his vision starts to fog at the edges.

( _“Lily’s gonna t’ die because of **you** , y’ hangin’ fuck!”_)

The Hospital Floor wing is surprisingly clean, James notes dazedly.

…

Eventually the blows stop, and James is helped to his feet.

A cursory glance passes over the Stunned form of one Snivellus as he now floats next to the bespectacled teen, and the form Headmaster Dumbledore looking the Gryffindor boy over as the old wizard's grim expression starkly contrasts his cheerily-animated robes. That expression gives way to open concern, as James cringes at the bright lights and the taste of his own blood pouring down his face, and then, the second thought finally makes landfall in the teen’s concussion-addled brain.

_‘Evans is going to live, **fuck**.’_


	2. Continuation Announcement: Apex (Predator)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warning:** Contains shameless self-promotion and fic-shilling.

So I gave this little oneshot a little extra spit and polish, added ANOTHER scene, and now it serves as prologue to a long-fic (probably) now, ya happy internet? Sweet Hecate, I already I have an entire outline drafted up and everything, and though I promised myself I’d wait until I finished writing a whole arc/act before I posted this, but I couldn’t resist the lure of immediate validation so RIP me, I guess.

**Here's a link to it and the attached (hopeful) series: **[Apex (Predator)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24502798/chapters/59147704)**.**

**Author's Note:**

> Also Snape is in hysterics at the end of the last scene, his best friend got mauled nearly to death and should she survive the night, will be permanently affected for the rest of her life. He never believed that James & company hadn't all been in on Sirius' "prank" (to murder-attempt him) in canon, so why would he believe otherwise now?
> 
> Also, Lily came thissssss close to dying when Moony bit her shoulder and neck, his teeth just barely missed nicking her carotid arteries, and if she hadn't knifed his face him shaking her would've broken her neck and killed her outright.
> 
>  **Broke:** Remus Lupin biting, and thus werewolfing, or killing someone in POA.
> 
>  **Woke:** Severus Snape getting bitten/mauled/killed by Sirius' Werewolf """prank."""
> 
>  **Bespoke:** Lily Evans following Snape through the Whomping Willow and getting turned into a werewolf.


End file.
